The National Consumer Action Council (MTPN) Sabah branch urged business operators in Sabah to display the correct prices of their goods to avoid confusing customers.

Its Consumer Complaints Bureau chief, Michelle Liew, said business operators who purposely put up different prices on the shelf and packaging but charging differently at the payment counter will face legal action.

“We have been receiving several complaints related to this issue in the past two months, and we currently have two cases under investigation. If the business owners failed to explain the situation, we will bring this to the relevant authorities for further legal action.

“Our first case is related to a service centre and the other one is a retail store. These businesses have been displaying prices that are not same in their cashier system. They clearly violated consumers’ rights and our information has revealed that they have been doing it for some times,” she said at a press conference on Friday.

Michelle added that consumers in Malaysia are protected under the Consumer Protection Act 1999, where the business operators are not allowed to mislead the consumers with their pricing.

With the current situation where most prices of goods have gone up, Michelle said business operators should be more responsible by updating their price labels and tags and completely erase the old pricing to avoid confusion.

“Our current case on the retail store is about price printed on the packaging that is completely different from the price that needed to be paid. Price stated in the packaging was RM5, but when customers are paying at the counter, the price went up almost double at RM9.19.

“Our preliminary investigation found out that the store marked up the price without erasing the old price on the packaging.

“There is nothing wrong with making profit in business, but every business operators has their own responsibility to provide customers with correct pricing so that they will have option to buy, or not to buy. They must display price according to the system in their cashier,” she added.

Another follow-up investigation of the same case found that the retail store did not change their pricing although their customers have been highlighting the issues.

“We will have another investigation on this and this time it will be brought up to the relevant authorities for further legal action,” she said.

To avoid similar incident from happening in the future, Michelle urged consumers to be more aware about their rights and report any wrongdoings to the relevant authorities.

Sabah MTPN branch can be contacted through its email [email protected]

Also present at the press conference were Sabah MTPN patron Kevin Lo Kian Min and committee members.

Source:
Ihsan PELITA BRUNEI

by MARIAH DOKSIL

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